Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/6471
Title: An overview study of twitter in the UK local government
Authors: Panagiotopoulos, P
Sams, S
Keywords: Government 2.0;Twitter;Microblogging;Online research;Social media analytics;Social media strategy;UK local government;eGovernment
Issue Date: 2012
Publisher: Brunel University
Citation: Transforming Government Workshop, Brunel University, London, 8 - 9 May 2012
Abstract: Microblogging applications are becoming a momentous element of the public sector social media agenda. The potential of Twitter to update the public with frequent, concise and real-time content has motivated many pubic authorities to create their accounts, thus generating an interesting topic for research. This paper seeks to make an empirical and methodological contribution to this new body of knowledge by presenting an overview study of general Twitter accounts maintained by UK local government authorities. Over 296,000 tweets were collected from the 187officially listed local government accounts. The analysis was conducted in two stages: an examination of the Twitter networks developed by the accounts was followed by a structural analysis of the tweets. The combination of online research and social media analytics techniques enabled us to reach important conclusions about the use of Twitter by those authorities. The findings indicate high level of maturity of Twitter in the UK local government and point to several directions for further increasing the impact and visibility of those accounts within a social media strategy.
Description: Copyright @ 2012 Brunel University
URI: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/6471
Appears in Collections:Computer Science
Dept of Computer Science Research Papers

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